A couple of years ago (mid-2002 to be exact) I got an idea for a finance related web site so I started searching for a good domain name. I tried typing in different combinations of all finance keywords I could figure out and one of my searches where for mutulfund.com. Guess my surprise when the domain name was available! What I didn’t realize at that moment was that the correct spelling should have been mutualfund.com. I never registered the domain name since I discovered my mistake, but the domain name mutulfund.com is registered by someone today and I guess they get at least enough visitors to pay the domain name fees

This story is not about me not being able to spell to mutual fund, but it’s meant to remind you of the horrible fact that people do spelling mistakes all the time. This time I was going to spend a few bucks on a domain name and therefore I checked my spelling a little better then if I would have done a search in a search engine. When people are searching in search engines they type in what they think is the correct spelling of what they want to find. So even if you’ve been a good student in school and done your homework, not everyone else will have done the same which means that you may miss potential visitors, subscribers and in the end: income!!!

Google and a few other search engines are suggesting a different spelling if you do a spelling mistake, but not everyone click on that link. Especially not if they find something really interesting as number one in the search results distracting them from the spelling error.

So when you’re blogging you should miss-spell one of your keywords on purpose just to get a chance of ending up in the search results for both the correct spelling and the miss-spelled word. Please note that I’m not suggesting that you’re going to miss-spell every keyword in your blog, web site or forum. Just one or two keywords on purpose per page (you may do other mistakes too so don’t over do it). If you over do it you may end up losing customers since your site may seem more like a hobby project created by a dyslectic

Since the Overture Keyword Tool is dead since a couple of months back Google Trends could be a useful tool to find popular spelling mistakes for your keywords. You could also get a Yahoo! Search Marketing account and use their tool to check high bids for spelling errors, but that may require some deposit or activation fee

Please note that I don’t like to read a text full of spelling errors, but sometimes one spelling error could give you more visitors, subscribers and customers.

4 Responses to “You Can’t Get Rich With Perfect Spelling”

At its best, typos can help you make a unique brand name, but at its worst it’s typosquatting (like registering “Mcrosoft.com”) A lot of web 2.0 startups are taking advantage of spelling variations with their names. They replace consonants with similar sounds, remove vowels, or add new ones.

I’ll agree that spelling a word differently can be good. I’m not trying to make money with my blog- it’s just personal- but its title is “Annecdotes,” a play on the word “anecdotes” and my middle name, and looking at who visits my website… it’s a lot of people who search for anecdotes but don’t spell it right.

I think the key is to find something that would be easily mistyped, or a word that is often misspelled. (A good example might be a company name that misspells a word on purpose, like Flickr. I just checked- Flicker.com is taken, and one of the larger tags on the page is “photographs.” Huh- imagine that.)

I found this out last year and have since been purposely misspelling key words as I know I have typed in the wrong word now and again when searching for something specific.

What does bug me more than anything, and I think bugs my wife even more than it does me, is when you are reading a article or website from someone who claims they are “college educated” or “better than most” and yet some of the simplest words are misspelled! We might not have a college education, but at least we either know how to spell the word, or have spell check!

If you want to look professional, you should write professionally and that includes checking your spelling!